Haven
by Shiggity Shwa
Summary: A dark glimpse of SG-1 years into the future. Focuses on Vala, and her reasons for leaving the SGC which are mistranslated by Cam. Mainly and referenced Vala/Cam, but hints at possible Vala/Daniel. Implied rape/Non-con/torture. First in a series of three.


_A/N:_ _I wrote this because I finished my angsty Unending fic and started working on the Bring it all Back sequel, and in it's cute and humorous plot I became bored because there wasn't my level of angst.  
_ _I wanted to write a story about Vala feeling trapped, being unsafe, being unequal, being sacrificed while still somehow remaining superior.  
_ _It's a three part series._

Haven

"Your face has changed  
I hardly know who you are this time  
And what a mess I've made of you"

— Sufjan Stevens, "From the Mouth of Gabriel"

* * *

They get caught because they're sloppy. Really sloppy. Came to PX3-155 on the suggestion of the newly formatted Research and Discovery department whose job it is to control the MALPs to check planets for high levels of radiation, for a poisonous atmosphere, for less than welcoming natives and they really screwed the pooch on this one.

He, Jackson, and the other two members of their diplomatic mission are tossed into a jailcell the size of a breadbox. In the last two years they've been filling the open positions on SG-1 musical chairs-style, now it's more of a reward for recruits who go above and beyond in the line of duty in order to get a free ride on the cool team for a month before being replaced.

Doesn't bother him anymore, but to be fair the last time he had a full and active team was over three years ago.

They managed to stay together for five years, which is pretty good.

He thinks none of them died either, which is even better.

Sam went off to Atlantis, then came back for a year or two—long enough for Woolsey to mess up almost everything and then leave. She's still head honcho out there and they go and visit her a few times a year, but the _Odyssey_ isn't running like it used to. Teal'c stayed a little longer, but as the white in his hair spread more and more he began to prefer outreach missions and signing treaties to being in the constant blaze of combat, he's always available to keep the peace whenever they dig themselves in too deep of a hole.

But she—she was first to go, snuck away during an active mission after they were captured. Thought she'd gone to get help, but when help arrived without her he knew she was gone.

Now it's just him and Jackson most days, the odd couple for sure, but they tend to balance each other out more often than not. Military strategy and logical response covered, all they were missing is an astrophysicist, a warrior, and a thief.

"Well," Jackson stands clapping his hands against his thighs, sending a puff of dust into the air. "This isn't what I would call a civil welcome."

"Are we going to die?" Gagnon, a new recruit who's only on his second day of wearing the big boy pants of SG-1 is instead wearing the wide-eyes of a deer caught in highway headlights.

"We aren't going to die." Schultz, who is nearing the end of his one-month tenor, swipes the dungeon dirt off his BDUs.

"Because I don't want to die."

Jackson clasps his hands around the iron bars holding them in. Not entirely rusted, a little newer than he expected. The whole dungeon looks as if someone's been down cleaning it. Usually there's a lot more bloodstains, broken shackles, at least some grime on the walls. The grime is always the worst part. "How did the Research and Discovery department get it so wrong?"

He shrugs his shoulders, mimicking Jackson's action on the other side of the cell door, then letting his arms, tired from carrying a backpack full of materials: weapons, and a few Earth delicacies to prove their planet's worth, before the guards stripped them of everything but the clothes from their backs and gave him a good right hook in the face when he tried to explain their peaceful mission. "They're new. They'll get better."

"That's the problem though." Jackson leans his forehead against the bars, closing his eyes with a sigh of irritation. "Everyone is new."

"Oh man, we're definitely going to die, and then my mom is going to find my internet search history and—"

He rolls his eyes and shouts over his shoulder, "give it a break, Gagnon, we're not gonna die."

A single guard clears his throat before the cell, he's about Teal'c's height and from the few bits of skin peeking through his armor, about the same build of muscle. Stands at perfect attention, his hands resting idly on the handle of his downturned weapon, not a sword and not a spear more like a cattle prod.

Gagnon gulps down the last sob he has, and all of them stop moving, stop breathing, waiting for the guard to continue. He doesn't look at them when he speaks, his eyes staring at the large chunks of wood slowly rotting while supporting the ceiling, "My Lord wishes your attention as an audience."

As the guard begins to walk away he calls out, "hey, if you want us to follow you, you're going to have to unlock this door."

"That won't be necessary, my Lord deigns to greet you as you are." The guard's face remains emotionless, and if he hadn't seen it so many times, on so many planets, it would be creepy to him.

"We were told your Lord was benevolent and understanding." Jackson keeps the conversation going, trying to squeeze out as much information as he can.

"She is." With that the guard turns, clanking back up the stone stairs.

Jackson turns his attention towards him. "She?"

"This is not going to be good."

They hear her before they see her. The clack of her heeled boots against the steps, the slapping of gold bits soldered into her ceremonial dress, the scratch of the talons from her hand device dragging against the stone walls of the spiraling stairwell. It's just intrinsic. He thinks he and Jackson sense her, just her vitality, before they even hear her.

They both gawk speechlessly as she steps a boot delicately onto the layer of sand covering the floor, as the fringe of her ankle length dress billows around her legs rhythmically. It's cut high at the front with obvious intent. Her eyes are darker, harder, narrow as she absorbs them locked up in what's basically a dog crate and a smug grin forms on her lips.

In a deep voice, a voice not her own, a voice he's only heard her use once to tell Jackson to shut the hell up when he interrupted a play in her honor, she speaks. "I've always wondered what happened to you two boys."

His front teeth grind off each other, his hands strangling the bars now. She left them. She's the one who left them. "How?"

"Oh, the what to the how aren't important my darlings." Glances up from where she steadies the undulation of her dress, it's heavy on her body, the strapless top squeezing against her chest. With another devious grin she steps forward. "Only the who, which is obviously me." Drags the toes of her boots through the sand as she sashays towards them, leaving little crescent moon marks in her wake. "And who the delicious new morsels on your team are."

Before he answers 'no one', before Jackson dives in to segue a new line of questioning while trying to quell the anger in his furrowed brows and white knuckles, Gagnon pipes up with a curdling, "Oh God, we're going to die."

"We're not going to die," he shouts back again for good measure although at this point it's useless. His words make her flicker an eyebrow at him, her eyes never trailing from his, his never from hers, off it masquerading in her body.

How?

She was with them, they had her and she was safe.

How long?

A pointed nail drags over his fingers, the sudden touch causes him to release the bars. "Don't go making him promises you have no method of keeping."

"Oh God. Oh God. Oh God." Gagnon now rocks against the side of the cell; the thump of his burly body reverberates through every metal bar. "We _are_ going to die."

She rolls her eyes, turns away from them, her hair flowing much like her dress, heavy over her bare shoulders and he can see the goosebumps plump on her skin for a few seconds. "Honestly, Colonel Mitchell," she scoffs as she strides to the bottom of the stairs, yelling in Goa'uld for her guard's return. "You've greatly lowered the bar on what is acceptable for SG-1."

"Work with what I got, Princess." Glances to Jackson who is stuck in shock, still dumbfounded at the discovery. After all the years, after all their horrible adventures, he can still be surprised. Maybe it's because Jackson's never saw her this way before.

He has.

When she left, he started binge watching old videos Area 51 secured upon her becoming an official part of the team. Qetesh marching along with stiff shoulders, but a body so fluid, a milky-skinned marionette covered in bruises and wearing a snarl of a smile. He read every single file the IOA had on her, or Qetesh, trying to figure out where she might run off too, where she has the best contacts because she's smart to seek out help, and she's charming enough to get it.

"Then your recruitment pool is infected with idiocy." As the guard passes her, she drags a finger up his arm and they share a grin. A grin he's seen before, a grin she gave him once in the white light of three moons seeping through a high window, dissected by iron prison bars.

"You think I don't know who you are, bitch?" Schultz spits pure venom from the opposite corner, his eyebrows dark and deep set. "You think the SGC doesn't teach about you, you fucking parasite, that they don't know how to—"

"Shut the hell up, Schultz." And it's Jackson disciplining the kids this time, not him. Jackson who shouts, his voice cracking, his spit landing and clumping in the sand. His hands cranked into claws at his unchecked rage and his face boiling red.

She only grins touching the back of another guard who enters the dungeon, followed by five more, all armed with the same prod, all stacked up in armor.

How.

How did they let this happen?

Thought when she didn't rush in with the cavalry to whisk him to safety, he assumed she was getting medical attention, assumed she was beamed back to base immediately.

He should've known.

Before disappearing up the steps again, her hair and dress flowing in time, she commands. "Bring the older ones upstairs to my chamber. The younger two I have no use for."

All the guards arm themselves and he expects that they'll fight their way out of this. That he and Jackson will get the upper hand on eight guards despite having no weapons to match them with and no skin to really pummel with fists.

Expects to at least get a few punches in before being dragged to the chamber that he can't let himself think of right now.

But the guards open fire, and he falls unconscious.

Awakens to the soft strum of cool fingers against his face, the gentle reassurance of a voice very close to his ear, purring with a nuzzling cheek, nudging him back into consciousness. Finds that the fingers are cold, not cool, golden knives and he's surprised he hasn't started bleeding yet. Opens his eyes to a bright light, warm and swarming at the side of his face. The static he felt there earlier, the heaviness from taking a punch or two from one of her guards, peels back from his skin.

He bolts up knocking her hand out of the way, grabbing onto her wrist shoving her back from him.

 _It was one time, just one time._

 _Both thought they weren't making it out, not alive anyway._

 _Captured because of a few wrong moves—it was his fault._

 _Entirely his fault._

 _Got distracted when he thought Sam went down in a mortar attack. She tugged at his bag, his jacket, his back to lead him away from the rubble where he shovelled his fingers into concrete chunks and craggy rocks searching for one of his oldest friends, a teammate that he thought his carelessness had gotten killed. Pushed her off, and she tumbled back slipping on some of the debris and by the time she smacked both of her hands to either side of his face, holding his swimming head still while she enunciated the importance of retreat, the enemy had the barrel of a gun jammed into his neck._

"I'm sorry, darling." Buries the initial shock of his sudden movement behind a grin, but it's not the same as before, it's almost calm, almost genuine. "I told those boys to go easy on you, and do you think they ever listen?" Pushes herself up from the lounge he's sprawled across, dress swirling around her as she moves to a four-post canopy bed. Jackson's sort of starfished in the middle of it, but his hands and feet don't even come close to the edge. "I had to flip a coin to decide which of you to wake first, then I ignored the answer and woke you in case you wanted to have a private talk before Daniel joins us."

 _The same cell._

 _Dusty light streaming through a high-barred window that every few days they would try to jimmy open, her thighs resting over his shoulders while she worked diligent fingers against corroding metal._

 _She was so warm._

 _So soft._

 _So effortlessly sexy as her tongue stuck out from the side of her mouth and her eyes squinted in thought. They would trade barbs and when she verbally mastered him he would give her thigh a squeeze and ignore the way her squeak made him feel._

 _One day they came close, so close with only one of the six bars left to free, both knew it was up to her to bring help because there was no way in hell he was getting through that window._

 _But the guards found out._

 _Found their escape and they stared at him as he readied himself for punishment, for death._

 _But the guards didn't come for him._

 _One twisted a hand into her hair and wrenched her away kicking and screaming._

 _He's never heard her scream before._

 _She screamed._

 _He pleaded and begged and when there was an echoing clank at the end of the hallway and no other sounds, he sobbed._

"I don't want to say shit to you unless you tell me how this happened." Rubs a palm against his eye and finds it not as swollen as before, finds that despite being zatted by the cattle prods he feels better than he did before getting shoved into that cell.

"How what happened?" The gouge of her bare chest beneath a heavy gold necklace that circles from the start of her neck to the start of her shoulders makes her look decapitated.

 _They brought her back a day later, nearly a day from where he drew lines on the cell floor as a basic sundial. The room was an orangey-brown haze when the heavy door screeched open and he darted awake from where he'd fallen asleep, his arms dangling outside the bars, from trying to break down the door._

"How you got control of her body again?" Pushes himself into sitting, his arms falling flaccid at his side, but the room's not spinning, or not too hot, or not too bright. "Who fucked her over, because she's smart. She one of the smartest people I've ever met." He jabs a finger across the room at the still slumbering Jackson. "And you saw who I came in with."

"Hmm," she hums, striding back towards him and in the sway of the dress he gets to see to the top of her thighs, the boots clack with power, and there's a pang in his chest because he misses when she would walk towards him with such intent, curl a coquettish finger and wink her eyelashes like a silent movie star. "Why do you assume someone betrayed her?"

 _There was blood, a lot of it dried into flakes, bruises fanning and swirling out like a ballroom gown, cuts and tears in her skin, some still weeping thickly and slowly like tar seeping between his fingers. Her hair wasn't soft like it was when he'd helped her get it untangled from one of the buttons on his BDU jacket when she accidentally fell asleep against his chest._

 _She didn't say a word._

 _Just shook._

 _Only shook._

 _He rocked, her with himself, her hair getting retangled and he mumbled his apologies like a mantra for days._

"She told me about you." Can't look at her because she told him a few graphic snippets of her life as Qetesh while they were locked away from the world so that they could feel something in nothing, feel something but cold, hungry and empty in all ways. "There's no way she would just let you back—"

She snickers, hands on her hips, gyrating in a gait, "She's always been quick to snatch up a good deal—"

"There is no deal tempting enough to make her—"

"What if I promised to leave you and your little planet alone?" Stands before him and the words burn through his skin like acid, pack more of a punch than any of her guards. "What if I agreed to leave all members of Stargate Command alive and breathing and happy little Tau'ri as they blasted off in their primitive little crafts to sow their adolescent seeds?"

 _He just kept apologizing because he didn't know what else to do._

 _Didn't want to touch her in case she didn't want to be touched._

 _Didn't want to leave her in case she needed an embrace._

 _He crouched beside her crumpled into the far corner of the cell and talked to her, and every time he raised a hand to stroke her hair or to wipe a smudge off her skin, he lowered it just as quickly. She didn't sleep at night or at all, she didn't eat the once-a-day meal of gray paste and stale bread._

 _Finally, on the third day, after nudging what passed as their meal to her and with her not responding at all, he touched her knee and her head shot up, didn't wait for words he knew weren't going to come out of her black scabbed lips, and gathered her against him once again._

 _Told her that she didn't need to be strong for herself, but for him because he wasn't making it out of there without her._

 _He's never been more of a selfish prick in his entire life._

"She sacrificed herself?" Wants to add 'again' but the word cracks in the back of his throat and he harshly swallows it.

"Quite the opposite of a betrayal, I'd say." She's crouching before him, knees tucking together which is odd for the way she told him Qetesh flaunted her body.

 _She would fall asleep if he held her._

 _He would stay awake the whole time._

 _There was no place to hide her, but this time he'd fight, this time they weren't taking her unless he was dead._

 _Started speaking to him in words, then small sentences, then sitting closer during the day, her fingers skimming along the floor beside his._

 _Weeks later she asked him about the window, to give her a boost and he refused, shocked at first that she would risk it again, then when she persisted because it was her body and her pain to bare and he had no right to tell her what she could and couldn't do, he hucked their bowl of paste for the day at the wall shattering the ceramic dish and painting the stone in the basic food._

 _They went back to not talking, and that night he was left empty, cold, and hungry._

"She didn't owe us anything." His voice cracks again and this time it's harder to swallow, and his vision blurs.

 _Weeks later, maybe months without more than one-word exchanges between them, he cupped her knee again, felt her body tense under his touch and he wondered if the blood ever washed off, if the cuts stillbled, if the skin that came in black scabbed and blue stained had faded back to her natural softness._

 _Told her if she wanted to try the window again he wasn't going to stop her, but he wouldn't allow them to take her again as long as he was breathing._

 _She scoffed, turned away, and he begged her to tell him what she needed to feel better._

 _She shouted she wanted to feel human again, and when he asked how the hell he was supposed to do that, she was already kissing him._

"Power dynamics shift, darling." Her voice is lower, not Goa'uld low, but hushing like a whisper, like the words she speaks are a hidden secret between the two of them.

 _Kissed her well into the night, rested his head against her chest as her hips rowed over him, coursed fingers down the smooth, supple skin on her inner thighs and tried to kiss away the dying yellow bruises. Sucked the skin on the side of her neck and she tasted like her, not like what had been done to her._

 _She clasped her hands behind his head so he wouldn't get a concussion smacking it off the wall with her frantic rhythm that was somehow a natural flow. Her feet curled around his ass, her toes keeping point against the wall and forcing his back straight._

 _Her hair was soft._

 _That's how he remembers it._

He motors his lips a bit at the suggestion, at the pieces slowly fitting together in his head, knows the surprise ending and he doesn't want to get there. "She's the one who left Earth."

The golden claws clasp over his knee, not cold, not sharp, barely noticeable because he's too busy looking into her eyes. Her eyes. "It doesn't mean she stopped loving any of you."

 _When he woke she wasn't there._

 _The cell wasn't big enough for her to hide and all her discarded clothing, some he peeled off her in a slow worship, some she ripped off in a frenzy, were missing and he thought they finally came back, tore her from him while they slept._

 _Bellowed for the guards as he slipped on his shoes, yanked on his black t-shirt and his BDU jacket—just screamed and beat the heel of his hand against the bars._

 _Someone finally came, not the guards who took her, but soldiers from Earth._

 _From the SGC._

 _They extracted him and before he left the cell, he glanced up and saw the window bars were missing._

"Why didn't she come to us, we could've helped her, we could've protected—"

 _She was missing._

 _Had contacted the SGC, delivered his position, gave a vague layout of the dungeon, and the tore her tracker out. Left it with the pile of her bloodied BDUs in an alley halfway across the village. They searched for her and never found her. He didn't sleep until Lam finally gave him a prescription to get him there. He talked with a therapist who tried to make him see her side and he does understand. He doesn't hate her._

 _He can't hate her._

 _He misses her._

 _She used to come on to anyone who walked too closely to her, anyone who defended her when they thought she was right, anyone who was kind to her, and she used the innuendos that spilled from her lips so easily with the warm press of her body to prove them wrong. To support her worthlessness and he always thought if he did succumb to her advances, she would be the one stuck on him, but he was wrong._

 _He was so wrong._

"I don't need your protection, Mitchell." Hand falls empty from his knee, the Goa'uld device still clasped in her palm, but belly up in surrender. In the end it's her eyes that give her away, he could find her in a crowded market just by her eyes. Knows them because for months they stared back at him in the bleak darkness of the shared cell. "I never needed your protection."

The words help too.

Tilts his head up from where he's hidden it in his hands, from believing the worst outcome for her because he's only witnessed bad outcomes with her, and the corners of her lips give a tug into a chaste grin, like the one he saw earlier. He smiles with trembling lips, linking his hands together not to touch her. "I never got a chance to give it, Princess."

"I've missed you, Mitchell."

"You've missed me?" The disbelief raises the volume of his voice, "I combed the entire galaxy looking for you."

"Yes, and if you knew me at all, you'd have realized that I didn't want to be found."

Grabs her wrist in mid-swing, effectively halting her stride away from him and the orbit of her dress hem. She glares at him in determination trying to round out the fear. "Why do you think I stopped looking?"

When their shared grins and locked eyes become too weighted, she drops her view, tugs her wrist away. "You can't stay here. I'll wake Daniel and have the guards escort you out."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Chases after her, boot grips squeaking across freshly polished marble floors. When he tries to grab at her wrist, she senses his movement, flipping her body, liquid in form, and the device is trained on him. He ignores it. "We don't see you for years, and now we randomly meet up on some craphole planet in—"

"We didn't randomly meet, you imbecile." Huffs, her chest puffing inside the restraints of her dress, but her arms drop. "I had a proxy answer your beacon call for peaceful treaties."

"Why?"

Her lips purse into an almost pout, her eyes flitting away again when they find his. "I just wanted to see the team again."

Crosses his arms because although he doesn't know all her tells, he remembers the ones she's shown him, the ones she displays when she wants her lies to be obvious. "That so?"

"Yes." Straightens her back in confidence and he tries not to let the gentle bounce of her chest distract him. But there's a flush creeping to her skin, like she knows the way he's thinking about her, remembering how the pebbles on the cell floor dug into his bare ass while she rode him, because that flush is the exact same one.

Without a nod or gesture she continues back towards Jackson still konked out, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "And to warn you about the obvious unwanted dangers of broadcasting your peaceful views to an entire galaxy that might not share them."

"So come back with us." Stops trailing her, standing in the middle of an ornate tile piece depicting this side of the galaxy. "You don't have to run, what happened—"

Boots stop clacking like a metronome keeping time and she pivots on her heel facing him, her expression is blank and he never thought that possible at all with her, but he honestly can't read her emotions when she questions, "When what happened?"

Realizes it's a delicate subject, it's verbal thin ice, but he needs clarification, after three years he still needs clarification. "The jail cell—what we did—what happened to you."

"Oh please, Mitchell, please do not tell me you assumed I ran away because of the guards—"

"Yes, in combination with other things." Interrupts her because he cannot handle having the full-blown conversation right now with unconscious Jackson as a partial participant.

"What the guards did was nothing new. It's happened to me before and statistically it will very likely happen again." She marches back towards him, her stride longer, her footsteps louder, echoing like gunshots, echoing like a door at the end of a hallway. She gets in his face about it, stands inches away from him, and even in those boots she's on her tip toes, the pad an index finger stabbing into his chest while she speaks. "I left Stargate—no, I left Earth because I realized in that cell that I would never be safe on that team. I realized in that moment that I was willing to sacrifice whatever needed to keep the team safe and it was never equal—"

His eyes dart away. He can't look at her. Sometimes when he dreams he sees her in blood, in pain, and he knows. Aims his voice at the floor, "You never gave us a—"

"You people locked me away in a mountain for five years. You wouldn't let me leave unless I was chaperoned."

"I fought for you." Jabs a finger at her, never on her, and he tries to keep it from wavering in the air. "I fought with Landry, with the IOA to get you—" pauses his own argument because there is none. He went to meetings, he wrote out reports, letters of support, went before government officials, basically everyone just shy of being the president and they all refused to give her freedom. The mountain became a cage, and even the winding hallways and easily stolen from personal offices became boring to her. "They always just saw you as a threat."

"I was never a threat, I was an ally."

"Then be an ally now. Help Earth now."

Scoffs, and gathers the length of her dress to the side as she perches on the edge of the bed. Her knees knock in a bit, the toes of her boots pointed down, pressing into the floor for stability and she told him she danced when she was younger. "Mitchell, I am done with Earth, and Stargate Command and all the other Tau'ri methods to—"

"What about me?" When she pauses her speech, he jogs the last few feet to stand beside her at the bed. Doesn't know why he would make a difference, they really didn't share anything and what they did was horrible, but sometimes in the middle of the night when he wakes from crashing his plane for the millionth time onto Antarctician soil, sometimes he thinks of her eyes watching him through the dark, or how she felt nestled against his chest, how she tasted exactly like what he didn't expect. It means something, the tranquility he gets and maybe he means something to her like she does to him.

Without thinking his hand cups the side of her neck, fingers tapping against the ridges on her golden necklace like piano keys, his thumb strumming over her cheek. "What if I needed the help, Princess?"

As expected, she guides his hand away from her face, her fingers encircling his thumb and palm and she's cold. When she speaks there are no little puffs of solid air, but the warmth of the words leaving her mouth glow against his skin. "In the very rare instance that you may need my help, Colonel Mitchell, you know where to find me."

Those are their last private words because she has to put her mask back on before she needs to build the armor back into place. She's right, no one can watch out for her like she can. No one knows exactly the hardships she's been through because that armor keeps her from leaking secrets about her past, but he got a front row seat and he couldn't help her. It was like staring into an eclipse. The amount of pain, the trauma laced into every single one of her actions blinded him.

He's not sure if she lets go of his hand, or if he lets go of hers, but she holds the hand device before Jackson slumbering like a baby, completely oblivious to what happened, before and now. She uses her freed hand to stroke his cheek, and there's the revival of a genuine smile of her lips as she whispers at him softly to wake up.

Jackson bolts up like he's going to do a front summersault, his hand flying to the side of his face where she held the device, his eyes wrenched closed in the lingering unconsciousness and the confusion of being misplaced. Before he opens his eyes, the grin falters from her face, the emotion and everything that shaped her burrows back inside her, and she becomes a shell masquerading as another shell.

"Oh Daniel." She strokes a finger down the side of his cheek and he swats her hand away. "You don't have the stamina she thought you would."

"Well I'm sorry to disappoint." His hand grips the back of his neck massaging into the muscles. "Where—?"

"I had my guards escort you and Colonel Mitchell up to my chambers." Stands from the bed, her body unbending and fluid. She danced when she was younger. Hands preen over her body stretching and straightening the already tight dress material. "You however, decided sleep was more enticing than this body—"

"What did you do?"

"Nothing, Darling."

"Then where are Gagnon and Schultz?"

"I sent the younglings on your team back through the gate, I've always been fonder of men with more experience." The deep voice purrs from her mouth, her shoulders strain in a faultless shrug as she rubs against him when she saunters by. "However, since what remains of her consciousness is refusing to let me play with you, I'm being generous and having you escorted back through the gate." Jackson sort of stares at her, open mawed, still assessing his body for any injuries or tampering. "I assume in my generosity of allowing you a safe trip home, you'll never return."

"What?" Jackson stammers, then glances to him waiting for him to disagree. He doesn't, doesn't even sigh and instead watches as Jackson escalates. "You're a system lord, a lesser system lord, but that doesn't matter, what's important is that you should be dead right now and instead you've hijacked my friend again, which I'm still unsure the details of, but I'm sure Mitchell—"

With one look he knows she's had enough, put up with him, but can't cycle through the emotions with Jackson too. The knowledge that two people care about her, or the idea that they do too straining and he gets it because when she first walked out of the gate in that leather getup he didn't give two shits about her, but after she left his life wasn't the same.

Claps a hand down on Jackson's BDU jacket and the dust that diffuses into the air gets into his lungs quick. "Struck a deal with her, Jackson. We've got safe passage and we should be thankful for that."

"You're just going to let Qetesh keep ruining her body?"

"For right now? Yeah, I am. Because it's not priority now."

They glare at each other while she calls out something in Goa'uld. Two guards appear with their gear, their weapons, and when they return to base, he finds all the chocolate stolen from both bags.

Jackson mumbles, zipping up the front of his jacket, still relatively on edge and unsure if he's been touched in any unrespectable manner. He'll make a big fucking deal with Landry about allowing Qetesh to remain alive and formulate half a dozen plans on how to extract her, where to hold the system lord, and even contacts the Tok'ra who reassure him Qetesh is dead.

When they leave the room, his hand on Jackson's pack pushing him forward, and a guard armed with a cattle prod to either side of them, he angles his head back to get one final look at her, one final snapshot of her in a golden dress and black boots and a necklace that felt like a car bumper. The jovial expression drops to concern, to sadness, and with one hand, bends her fingers weakly in a goodbye.

In two years, none of it will matter.

She's not even with them anymore, and she's more right than ninety percent of the staff hired to predict this sort of shit. The peace beacon they constantly broadcast comes back to bite them in the ass. A race, a previously undiscovered and violent race, finds their location and just start attacking. The mountain is specifically targeted as they were able to trace the exact location, and the SGC moves from Cheyenne to the Beta location in England. He doesn't even get to unpack his bag before they have to abandon post again two days later, after that it was Antarctica, and finally they escape on the _Odyssey_ , managing to find clear space to sit and regroup.

Start reaching out to allies, the list of which is getting shorter and shorter each year. No more Asgardians, the Tok'ra who have proven they don't want to fight battles unless it's their own, the Jaffa who Teal'c was able to convince to help, and the crew on Atlantis. It's not the ragtag group of plucky heroes from any action adventure movie, it's the trained military members whose job it was to defend Earth and failed.

"So basically we're screwed." O'Neill interrupts Jackson's long lecture on the conquering race.

"Pretty much, yeah," Jackson agrees.

"We've tried reasoning with them, we've tried offering partnerships, we've tried all weapons including atomic bombs and missiles, but none seems to be able to penetrate the shields of their ships." Sam, looking completely dishevelled, really feeling the whole failing Earth thing, runs a hand through her hair and sighs. "Does anyone else have any ideas?"

He removes his hat, flipping it onto the table and bites the inside of his cheek. "I might know someone who can help."

"What are you doing?" Jackson stands in the doorway to the weapons lock-up. He'd call it an armory, but the number of weapons leaves something to be desired. There's not enough to arm everyone on the _Odyssey_ currently, let alone any allies who might come to fight for them.

"Grabbing a gun before I head out." With the huff he gets as a response, he knows that wasn't the answer Jackson was looking for. They're going to have this conversation, he's not as smart as the polyglot demigod of an archeologist who is toeing the line of becoming his best friend, but he knows enough about him, about Jackson, about her, to predict their words. "I'm just taking a sidearm, I shouldn't need more than—"

"I know where you're going."

"I assumed you would."

"Then you know you aren't going alone." Jackson crosses his arms now like the bouncer to a very trendy nightclub.

"I hate to tell you this, Sunshine," he chuckles a bit as he loads the cartridge into his gun. "But you're not that threatening."

"And you're not that sneaky."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I know why you're going back there, Mitchell."

"Uh yeah, I made that clear in the meeting." Holsters his weapon and cracks his knuckles, stretching his fingers. Being in space always gives him aches and stiff hands.

Jackson stands solid in the doorway, shifts his weight when he tries to duck around him. Reminds him of the basketball games they all used to have, always getting their butts whooped by aliens on and off the court. "You're going back because of her."

"Yeah, because she can help us."

"Okay. Okay." Jackson calms himself before they escalate into trading physical punches instead of just dancing around verbally. "Let me phrase this in a different way: I know something happened between you and Qetesh before I woke up."

Checks his watch, an excuse to break eye contact, an excuse to expedite the conversation. A distraction from thinking of her cheek pressed against his, from focusing on the caress of her skin, the comfort of her words, the lilt of her voice. "We had a conversation."

"Must've been one hell of a conversation because the way you were looking at her, I would have thought—"

"Look, I don't have time for this, Jackson." Hands fling to the side, and the multilingual doctor, the stuttering archeologist, his long-time teammate, his best friend, takes a step back. He's doing it for Earth, he's doing it because she said she would help him if it came to this, he's doing it because despite her lies and deceit and violent past he trusts her implicitly. "Just grab a damn gun and let's go to the gate."

He's doing this because he's going to die soon and he wants to see her one more time.

They're sloppy on purpose this time, march through the jungle brush like bulls in a china shop. Jackson blasts questions at him like a greenhorn open fires on a running deer in a meadow, and he tries to dodge them all. Answers them until he gets bored. Answers them until they become too personal because he doesn't know how close she was with Jackson. Doesn't know if she would appreciate him blabbing all about her childhood traumas and torture at the hands of almost everyone.

Doesn't know if she's shared herself with Jackson as she did with him.

Don't find her guards until they're almost at her palace, which isn't really so much a palace as an opulent upper-class home now that he takes it in with new knowledge. Sure, it probably has a dozen bedrooms and a ballroom, but in comparison to some of the castles he's seen, it's pretty paltry.

The guards train their cattle prods on them, and he rolls his eyes. "Look, we just want a brief conference with your Lord. We only have minimal supplies and weak munitions, we don't plan on staying."

For an answer he gets a mean left hook, a weaker right hook, and a cattle prod to the center of his chest.

Expects to wake up in the smallest, cleanest dungeon in the world, but instead cracks a painful eye open to reveal a familiar domed ceiling with various pictures of her painted on them like a chapel. She's not hanging over him, nuzzling him back to life like a momma cat, or purring sweetly in his ear. She's at the end of the lounge perching on the cream-colored cushion, cramming her body away from his.

Her dress is gorgeous on her, a deep red halter and what looks like a longer ballet tutu with braided material connecting the top to the skirt. She irons the material over her thighs and it barely reaches her knees. Her lips match the shade of red and while staring across the room to Daniel who's once again starfished on the bed, she questions, "Why are you here, Mitchell?"

Rubs at the back of his head where the contact of falling unconscious on the ground is leaving a nice sized goose egg. "You told me if I was ever in trouble I could come to you, Princess."

"I didn't assume it would be this soon, nor did I expect you to bring company."

Pushes against the uneven back of the lounge and manages to sit himself upright, still rubbing his head and his neck. "Well I'm sorry I didn't read the terms and conditions closely enough."

When his knee nudges hers, telling her to get the joke, she rockets up from sitting. "I will wake Daniel, and you will both—"

"We need your help." Thumb traces around the swelling in his eye, he can open it, but just barely.

"Fine then." She throws her arms down in a weak huff, despite the perceived stiffness in her skirt, the material still finds a way to billow around her. "I will hear your request and if it is doable, I will offer my aid, either way you will leave this planet and you willnever come back."

Wants to ask if he just can stay here. If he can't make a new life being her head guard or water boy or something. But he's not good at caring for people, for things, grew up on a farm and the responsibility of animals depending on him, people depending on him anchors him in place, never lets him grow or explore. It would be a great time to explore if his entire planet didn't depend on him keeping his logic and his emotions in check. "We need you to come back with us."

The sway of her skirt stops, her torso twists as she observes him, trying to find the hint of humor in his request, her ribs compact, and the skin bundles a bit above her hips, still remembers the angled feel of her hip bones pistoning underneath his grasp. "There is no situation so dire that would require me to leave this planet."

"You might want to sit down for this one." Slaps his hand into the cushion beside him and watches the debate cross her face of whether to approach him and listen, or to wake Jackson up. When she makes no movement to return he starts his story anyway. "Remember how you warned us that broadcasting a beacon of peace would bring about some awful enemies."

"Oh Cameron," his name leaves her mouth as she covers her face with her palm, hanging her head in contact embarrassment. "How bad is it?"

"Well they took out Cheyenne Mountain, the Beta location in England, the Antarctica base—"

He knows the horror of those dead, those who didn't make it out on time is very pertinent to her, but also knows that she can't focus directly on that issue right now. Instead she fans her fingers over the hand device and flops next to him, her knees jostling him this time.

Her fingers are cool and strong as she turns his chin so he faces her, despite everything, having a castle and a wait staff and burly handsome guards, she looks fatigued. Looks unrested. Hand splays across his injuries and he closes his eyes to the bright orange glow like a beach sunset. His face grows warm, but not to an uncomfortable degree, and the swollen skin around his eye begins to relax.

When he reopens his eyes there is no restraint and she still tilts his head with her hand, her thumb sweeping out from under his chin to clear away dried blood or a dirt smudge. "You poor Tau'ri." She grins at him, truly grins despite the situation and their past. Her thumb stills and then depresses in the butt of his chin. "You're always wanting to be part of something bigger than yourselves."

He retrieves her hand and presses the palm to his lips in a gentle appreciation. Tries to drown himself in that moment, sketch the scene in his mind remembering the blackness of her hair, and how her eyes glistened at him, the stiff peaks of the dress rolling softly between his fingertips and red was never so unjarring, so welcoming.

But she flicks the tip of his ear and draws her hand away. The sway of her gait has waned and she's feeling fatigued from healing him, will be more so after healing Jackson, forgets that her body has been broken apart and glued back in places, that her mind is a plate shattered thousands of times with fragments so small no one can fathom because she keeps them for herself. "I'll wake Daniel, then you can fill me in on the way."

"Don't." Hangs his head, the freshly polished marble floors gleam and what made him leave last time—she insisted, but what made him really go.

"What?" Half swivels away from him, the ball of a barefoot pressed into the floor keeping her stable. She was a dancer.

"Don't come with us."

The provocative gyration no longer present in her hips when she walks, just light and soft like the flutter of a butterfly. "I don't understand."

"Help us as much as you can." She stands right in front of him and he can smell her, still smelling like the way she did that night, just her and nothing else and it's almost intoxicating. The memory, the motion, all five of his senses back in that moment. "Just stay here. Stay safe."

Expects her to recoil, to lash out at the mention of a concept he could never give her, Earth could never give her, but she crouches before him, knees knocking inwards and she clasps each side of his face with her hands, and he's back in a pile of rubble, her enunciating words to him that he can't hear through gunfire.

Then her lips press to his, a gentle kiss, the memory of one they never shared. Soft and plush, restricting and warm. His lips gloss over hers, his hand cupping the side of her face, neck free of heavy metal restraints, only an expanse of skin.

The kiss means nothing and everything.

A distraction among the rubble of his planet, his country—all countries, his house, his parents' farm, and the store where he buys his groceries.

A present in all the hard crags of cement and concrete, of an entire mountain crumbling from within and years of progress lost for the want to be included, for allies, for security.

A sentiment of what they never were, and what they never will be as her nose knocks against his and she maintains a perfect balance.

An understanding, something they never had before because they've never been equals before, because she's never been more superior to him than right now.

An agreement acknowledging the dangers behind the situation and the inevitable likelihood that they're both going to die within the next few days.

He ducks back and she has the genuine grin again, small and tugging on her shining lips, the one he recognizes as rueful now, a mourning smile of comprehension. She taps his cheek twice with her finger, but then settles her hand again. "There is no such thing as safety, darling."


End file.
